


En plena luz

by gloss



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Future Fic, M/M, OTP Feels, PostWar, resistance and refusal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-23 16:58:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9667103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gloss/pseuds/gloss
Summary: A short story about resistance, refusal, and re-commitment.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [galacticproportions](https://archiveofourown.org/users/galacticproportions/gifts).



> Happy birthday to my beloved GP.

_Al final del viaje estamos tú y yo intactos._  
 _Quedamos los que puedan sonreír_  
 _en medio de la muerte, en plena luz._   
Silvio Rodriguez, [ Al final de este viaje](https://youtu.be/Vbnoq4DPwoc)

Peace cannot be unilateral. So long as there is imperialism in the world, a permanent peace is impossible. — [Hassan Nasrallah](http://www.counterpunch.org/2006/08/17/the-nasrallah-interview/), August, 2006

 

He finds Poe down at the shore, perched on the side of a jagged black rock. There isn't as much wind this morning as usual, but that's all relative. The sea shifts restlessly before them. The waves are crisply edged with foam that drags and lingers on the sand as the water pulls back.

Poe has one knee pulled up against his chest, his chin tucked down against the neckline of his heavy jumper. Made of blue and gray kybuck wool, deeply ribbed, the jumper smudges Poe into the landscape; his hair does, too. Dark-and-silver curls tangle like wrack in the wind. But his face is flushed, defiant, his jaw set. His eyes are brighter than any wet granite.

Negotiations have not been proceeding smoothly.

"What if..." Finn pauses, as if to savor the thought, weigh it on his tongue, before letting it pass. "What if we just said no?"

Poe breathes out a small, hoarse 'ha'.

Finn made him that jumper, two winters ago now. The peace was still holding then, but as one holds a breath, or a palm full of cold seawater. Just now, and temporary, and soon to spill, choke, change. But they pretended otherwise. They had to. They set up housekeeping in a tiny corner flat in an old section of the capital, bought little herbs in pots and coaxed trailing vines brought all the way from Yavin to grow along the windows. They slept well at night, entwined and sweaty, spent and spattered with pleasure. They rose in the mornings to go to work like good clerks. Push papers and approve expenses, nothing so *overtly* violent as bombing runs and commando operations.

Finn took up knitting, spent ages on holo-calls with Poe's father to learn. Hands that held blasters and light sabers ached to maneuver small, light needles and control fine, downy wool. Poe tried droid-modding and -fighting, and then some kind of martial art from the Outer Rim composed of grunts and high, vicious kicks, and then competitive poetry memorization on the holo-net. They tried, everyone was trying so hard; the times were trying.

They had a home, and hobbies, and each other.

One long statutory holiday, they didn't rise from bed except to piss and eat for two and a half standard days. Poe's beard came in, Finn got a cramp in his hamstring, and eventually they even lost track of the number of orgasms they'd had.

They had what they'd been fighting for.

They also had legions of dead behind them, and refugees all around them, and several new, never-before-described medical conditions that might be a syndrome or separate ailments, but which all derived ultimately from the effects of weaponized starshine on living tissue.

They had their peace, but the destruction was larger than any tranquility could ever manage to be.

Maybe they weren't any good for anything but dogfights and hand-to-hand, missiles and blasters, explosions and screams. Maybe the galaxy was only good for that, for hosting death and rewarding the vicious, for offering up more victims without names, faceless and silent but for rattling bones.

When the peace frayed and trembled and collapsed, it came in a thousand different ways. They looked at each other, already holstering their blasters and patting down their pockets for ammo and false identi-chips. Looked, and grimaced. Finn grabbed Poe by the shoulder, then the hair, and kissed him hard enough to bruise, to cut, to *remember*.

"We're not done," he said fiercely and Poe nodded, his mind already parsecs away, but his heart, his heart was right there, booming in his chest and filling his throat. "Do you hear me?"

"Yes," Poe said, and, clutching at Finn, "I do. I *do*."

Here they are now, at dawn, as two moons set over the waves.

"I'm not joking," Finn says. "Say no. They're wrong."

"Who?" Poe's still gazing over the uneasy water, but his arm and side press against Finn a little more firmly with each breath.

"All of them, actually."

Poe snorts again and scrubs the heel of his hand over one eye, then the other, then back to the first. "That's not --. It's not like that, can't be."

"Tell me who's right, then."

Poe opens his mouth, tastes the salt and ice on the wind, and closes it again. Beside him, Finn is immobile, as strong as the rock on his other side, but warmer. Steadier. "Leia is --"

"Trying to salvage a peace that never should have happened or held in the first place."

"Finn." Poe pronounces it like a warning, maybe a plea.

"Poe." Finn says it gently, with all the conviction he possesses.

There's an argument being had, a decade in the making, one that they've had several times without ever actually *saying* anything, there's the split between them that they can't seem to let themselves see. 

Finn can walk away; Poe is loyal. Both truths are inexorable; neither can yield.

They've always believed the best about each other. Even when everything shouted the contrary, when there was no reason to trust or hope, they did. Each saw in the other the best sort of achievement and potential, even when he himself knew only bloody hands, aching bones, eyes burning and dry.

"I love you," Finn continues. The words are every bit as jarring and decisive as the first time (smoking ruins of D'Qar base, twilight, one ration bar and sleeping bag between them). 

"Yeah," Poe mutters, and swallows something crumbly and sour. He slips his arm through the crook of Finn's and covers Finn's hand with his own. "You're freezing."

"Because *my* lover doesn't make me warm jumpers."

"Maybe he will," Poe says. "Later. No, soon."

"A likely story," Finn replies. He slips his hand free and shifts so he can squeeze the back of Poe's neck, work his thumb against the knotting tension there.

Poe groans. "Say no?"

"Say no. Say fuck this, say go to hell, get out of here."

"I already said two of those," Poe admits as he tugs the jumper cuff over his hand. "Fuck you, I said, and this is Bantha-shit."

"Good start," Finn tells him and lets his touch go softer, gentler, until his fingertips are in Poe's hair, stroking the knobs of bone at the base of his skull.

"Get out of here, go where?" Poe's voice falls against the lifting wind and yowling surf.

"Where we can help. Anywhere."

"Anywhere," Poe echoes, then again, and the repetition becomes meaningful in itself. 

Say no, walk out, leave these excruciating deliberations, and go where? See what? In the howling, frigid dark, except stars, clouds of them, quavering lights, each one a world.

"Yes," Finn says.

Poe nods, and pulls Finn close, and says, "I love you, too, you know."

That's something Finn knows, has probably known even longer than Poe himself. That's something Poe has said more times than mornings they've been together. That's something they trust.

They can turn their backs on the chasm, refuse the argument, and set out towards something brighter. Make it catch and jump, leap hot and strong.


End file.
